Various dough products are commercially produced by extruding a sheet or ribbon of dough of a generally uniform thickness onto a conveying mechanism such as a conveyor belt, then cutting multiple discrete shapes from the dough with an appropriate cutting device. Dough sheets of this type may be moved in a continuous operation or may be indexed along a travel path in a non-continuous manner. In either case, the device that cuts the discrete dough pieces is typically selected to be in synchronization with the conveying mechanism to cut the desired pieces at the appropriate times.
One specific example of a process for cutting discrete pieces from a sheet of dough is referred to as a die-cutting process. In this process, a dough sheet is typically moved or indexed forward along a travel path by incremental amounts with a brief pause period between each subsequent indexing movement. This pause period provides the necessary time for a die cutter to move in a generally perpendicular direction to the dough surface to punch a shape or multiple shapes through the dough. The die cutter then moves away from the dough and back to its starting position while the dough sheet is again indexed forward until the next portion of dough is properly positioned relative to the die cutter for cutting the next section of dough. This cycle may be repeated multiple times to produce the desired quantity of dough products. Examples of dough products produced by such a technique include pizza crusts, pie crusts, and tortillas. With such products, the die is typically circular in shape and cuts through the dough with a single stroke of the die cutter.
In a typical die cutting operation, it is often desirable to minimize the amount of unused material between adjacent cut dough products in order to lessen the amount of dough material that needs to be discarded or reprocessed. Thus, the size of the dough product being cut from the dough sheet and the width of the dough sheet may be selected to maximize the amount of the dough sheet that is included in one of the final dough products. It is not possible, however, to entirely eliminate this excess material when cutting circular shapes, since adjacent circular shapes cannot be completely abutted against each other. It is easier to minimize the amount of this excess dough material when making dough products with straight edges, such as triangles or squares, since each shape can be abutted against or nested with an adjacent shape, with little or no excess material between the shapes.
Dough products may also be cut from a continuous sheet of dough with a rolling die cutter. In this type of process, die blades or edges are mounted on the outside periphery of a circular drum in a particular configuration so that as the drum rotates, the die blades are pressed into a sheet of dough that is moving at a relatively constant speed past the circular drum. The speed at which the circular drum rotates is synchronized with the speed at which the sheet of dough moves so that the final cut dough products have a desired size and shape. Typically, the dough products are then moved to another area for further processing, and/or are packaged for shipping to a customer.
In either of these described methods for converting sheets of dough to discrete dough products, it is common to have problems with the dough sticking to the die blades during and after the cutting operation. In some cases, the dough can be coated with flour or oil to decrease the amount of dough sticking to the die blades; however, the use of such additional products may cause undesirable changes to the properties of the dough product. While it is also possible to minimize the tendency of the dough product to stick to the die blades by coating the die blades with a nonstick coating, such nonstick coatings tend to lose their effectiveness over time as they wear out with repeated uses.
Regardless of any techniques used to minimize sticking of dough to the die blades, the tendency of dough to stick to a die is larger for dough sheets with greater thicknesses. This is due, in large part, to the fact that more of the die blade comes in contact with dough during each cutting stroke when the dough is thick than when the dough is thin. In other words, any tendency of the dough to stick to a die blade will increase with a corresponding increase in surface area of the die blade that contacts the dough.
The tendency of dough to stick to a die blade also increases for laminated dough products and for dough products having smaller perimeters or “footprints”, regardless of the thickness of the dough. In other words, a laminated or non-laminated dough product having a smaller perimeter will be more likely to stick within the confines of a die blade than a product with a larger perimeter. Thus, it is desirable to provide a method for die cutting a dough product that is both relatively thick and relatively small in area or perimeter from a continuous sheet of dough, while minimizing or eliminating the tendency of the dough product to stick to the die blades.